THE SNIPERS PERSPECTIVE

Last night the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Detroit Red Wings 5-3, which saw Marner record a goal and an assist, Reilly record a goal and assist, Matthews record 2 goals, but it saw Tavares record an incredible 4 assists! The sad thing is, as impressive as it is, it’s not even uncommon this season, as he is the 5th player to do it, and we are only just over a week into the season!

But with Tavares already having 10 points in 5 games this season, what is a realistic expectation for him points wise? Never has Tavares played on a team with so much talent as the Leafs do this season, and he is taking full advantage of it. Their Powerplay is lethal, operating at 50% so far through 5 games and he is enjoying every minute of it, recording already 3 points on the powerplay.

In a career 674 games Tavares has 631 points, so he operates at just under a point per game, but he has never played on a line with someone as skilled as Marner before, and has never played on a powerplay with Matthews, Marner, Kadri and Reilly. So while he operates at a career point per game of .93, we know he is a point per game player without all this talent around him. In the 14-15 season he set career highs in both goals and points, which was 38 goals 86 points, and he will leave that number is his dust this season. At his current pace he would finish the season at 164 points, while that will not be the case, it would not be unrealistic to think he maintains a point per game pace for the remainder of the season, which would finish him with 87 points, which alone would beat his career high. But from this moment on, a realistic number would be he operates at a point per game average of 1.15, this would give Tavares another 88 points over the 77 games, ending his season with 98 points.

My personal prediction is John Tavares ends the season with 41 goals and 57 assists.